


Up On A Pedestal

by parkguardian



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, stydia - onesided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2707325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkguardian/pseuds/parkguardian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Lydia isn't perfect, she's better than.</em>
</p>
<p>features events from seasons 1 to 3e15</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up On A Pedestal

**Author's Note:**

> i realized most of my pieces for teen wolf are stiles-centric. to remedy this, i attempted a character study with everyone's favourite banshee, lydia. thank you for reading! xo

She can remember when his hair was grown out like tangled weeds. Now, it's been reduced to a scraggling buzz cut that makes his face round, like a child's. His amber eyes have been on her for years, and she can't remember his name.  
  
She's only pretended to ignore him. He's approached her on occasion, trembling and trying not to gnaw at his fingers. As if it's a big deal to squeak out a word to the perfection that is _Lydia Martin._  
  
But Lydia isn't perfect, she's better than.  
  
Her hair is plaited to a wreath against her head, silk soft and supposedly strawberry blonde. Her lips are stained ruby red. Legs crossed and head bowed over a book on immunogenetics, the heavy weight of Jackson's arm comes to settle at her shoulders.  
  
Jackson is easy to figure out. He's got identity issues that all boil down to never meeting his biological parents. He's symmetrical and his hair sticks up every which way. He's not the best to talk to, since he's almost always prone to prattling about lacrosse or the difference between Vuitton and Versace. He's fun to kiss and even more fun to fuck.  
  
When her parents are screaming, their debates echoing through the tomb that is the Martin mansion, she squeezes into her best matching underwear.  
  
She's soft and round in all the right places. Her stomach spills over the top of her panties. She lets her hair down so that looping curls fall into place at her shoulders. She pulls herself into an outfit that's easy to slip back out of. She fumbles with the clasp on her skirt. the zipper threatens not to close over her belly, but she manages. She's not sensible when it comes to her shoes. She wants to walk through the house and have her parents hear the heels clacking as she storms through the front door. She wants them to know she's leaving.  
  
Lydia has the key to Jackson's house. He's her distraction for the evening. She'd rather shove him down and kiss him until she's breathless than listen to her father yell without purpose.  
  
Jackson is helping her escape from her crumbling home the night that she sees dead red eyes and black matted fur. It smashes through the window, leaving trails of glass and blood in its wake. She screams until her voice is shredded and there's a ringing in her ears but she can't stop. There's a jarring, disconnected thought her mind supplies her from the guide to cryptozoology she'd flipped through just two weeks ago--  
  
There's no way that this monster is real. All evidence of the shattered storefront proves otherwise. She finds Jackson, who is equally scared out of his mind. He clings to her, fingers digging into the fabric of her cardigan as she stares up at the pale husk of a full moon.  
  
She's stuck in her room when her buzz cut boy comes to visit. He's blurry and she's swallowed down too many pills to count. The sequence is like a dream. Lydia splays her hands across his face and leans in close, desperate to remember what her mom had said his name was before he'd stepped into the threshold of her room. All she can think is _mountain lion._  
  
Lydia and Allison became fast friends. Allison is gorgeous and fun to hang out with. Lydia braids Allison's hair until Allison learns how to do it herself. Allison lets Lydia look through her paintings and her poetry, all things that she insists she's no good at but Lydia is blown away. Allison was hiding an array of talents behind her shy smile, and Lydia makes a big display of admiring each piece of Allison's work.  
  
Lydia has always wanted to try drawing and painting. When she goes home, she sits down at her desk and stares at blank paper, listening as her mother and her father fight on and on. She goes to put the pencil to the sketch pad, and the lead breaks. She growls, muttering under her breath, and stalks out into the hallway.  
  
She screams.   
  
She screams for her parents to be quiet, screams that she's trying to work, screams until all of their arguments are drowned out in the sound of her own voice. Her mother wipes tears from her eyes and her father slinks away to the other side of the house. Lydia will make amends with her mother later, she decides, and disappears back into her room.  
  
With a newly sharpened pencil, she tries again. Her skin is buzzing and a persistent ringing fills her head. She doesn't realize what she's drawn until she's finished. Staring up from the page are those unblinking eyes. She stifles a shriek and rips the page in half, leaving it crumpled in the waste bin.  
  
She sees the beast a third time in one of Allison's books. It looks like a wolf, and she tells Allison this. It looks like a big wolf. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not look like what went tumbling through the blockbuster, vocal chords tucked in its teeth.  
  
It's at this point in time she has learned her constant companion's name. He is Stiles Stilinski. He is clumsy, he is expressive, and he is impressionable. He believes that he is undergoing higher levels of cortisol, but Lydia knows it's impossible to be in love with someone you've put on a pedestal for so long. She politely ignores his insinuations of them becoming a couple.  
  
Despite this, Allison suggests that she take him to the winter formal, because of course it's only after Jackson dumps her in a school hallway that she realizes he wasn't _just_ a distraction.  
  
Lydia dances with Stiles, and it's a little awkward. She's glad she's able to hang on him and know his name, though. She can't stop thinking of how skinny he feels in comparison to Jackson, and how unfamiliar the smell of his cologne is. He's been a better-than-perfect gentleman, and she still leaves him in search of the boy who is on his way to being the first to break Lydia's heart.  
  
The lights at the lacrosse field click on one by one. She can see her breath in the icy gloom. A figure is lumbering toward her, and he's twisted. His gaping maw is split with yellow fangs and he shreds her silver dress and leaves her bleeding on that field. She thinks she hears Stiles over her, but she's fading out of consciousness before she can thank him for being nicer to her than any boy has been in years.  
  
She doesn't remember wandering through the woods. She doesn't remember each session with Ms. Morrell. The word butterfly on her tongue is a mantra for the Rorschach images she sits through. When she thinks back to that lanky guy in the waiting room, she can't remember what his face looks like. It's a blur.  
  
She is a fractured mirror. She is brave and she is broken. Her bed is filled with worms and upturned mulch. Her knuckles are slit open. She's ripping her hair out and she's screaming until bile fills her throat. That demon, Peter Hale, has squeezed his way into her every thought. He is a knife, twisted into her gut. He is a noose around her neck. He is a loaded gun and he is the finger on the trigger.  
  
"You're just like me, Lydia," Peter sighs. "You're too important to die. Isn't it _funny_ how birds of a feather...?"  
  
He doesn't finish. She knows the rest.  
  
"When you come back, I'm not going to be afraid of you," she bites out, but she's speaking to an empty room.  
  
The pieces of the puzzle all fall into place with time. Lydia is in the passenger seat of Allison's car, pulled to a stop in the driveway of Lydia's house. Allison takes Lydia's hands and gently explains all that's been going on, and Lydia is enraged, because no one understands what's going on with _her._  
  
She's in tears when she holds out her key to Jackson, marveling as the scales across his skin fade to nothing. Then, he's gone. He ditches town without much of a goodbye. She lets the teeth of his house key dig into her palm like the bite of an alpha wolf.  
  
A twig snaps beneath her heels, and she hears a fragile teenager begging for his life. She scratches out her grocery list. The sound of the pen on paper makes her grit her teeth. With each looping scrawl, she hears someone gasping for breath. She tries to ignore it, but when she gets into the car to drive to the store, she pulls up outside the Beacon Hills community swimming pool, and she's beyond confused.  
  
She screams, her hands dripping with the water from the pool and her hair thrown about by the wind. She screams until she can think clearly again.  
  
Ligature strangulation. She can see ecchymoses around his neck, around the dark gash where he'd been asphyxiated. Blood is spilling all down the body's front from where his neck has been cut open. His lips are pale. His eyes, lifeless. They stare up at the sky.  
  
She pulls out her phone and calls for Stiles' father. Then, she calls Stiles. He's upset that she didn't call him first.  
  
She hides her face in Stiles' neck, wanting to crawl into his skin and disappear in his gangly body because she doesn't want to be herself anymore. He runs his fingers through her hair, guiding her away from the scene. She wants to be engulfed in the sound of screeching sirens so that she will never have to hear the rasping of whispered pleading ever again.  
  
Stiles is her new speed dial. It comes with the perks of stumbling upon carnage so frequently. When she tries to sleep, she sees slashed throats behind her eyes, and an illuminated lacrosse field strewn in blood.  
  
Aiden reminds her too much of Jackson. Without a doubt, he is Lydia Martin's type. He's got the same cocky smile. The colour of his hair is close enough, and feels nice when she puts her hands into it. He's a bit of a sloppy kisser and his hands are strong and calloused. Sure, she'll be upset when their fling runs its inevitable course, but she's not looking for anything serious with him.  
  
When Ms. Blake--yeah, big surprise there--is holding a taut wire to Lydia's throat, she does the only thing she seems to be good at anymore. She screams, and it takes the emissary by surprise.  
  
Banshee. The fairy woman, the messenger of the underworld. The spirit who wailed when someone was going to die.  
  
Lydia thrashes against the makeshift confines holding her to the plastic chair. Her mascara is running and her hair is sticking in her lip gloss. She doesn't want to die. She has just found out what is happening to her, and like hell she is going to die in the high school. She isn't going to give The Darach the satisfaction of another sacrifice.  
  
She is Stiles' tether in the search for the Nemeton. She's the one holding him under the water, watching as he drowns. Her chest is tight with worry when he grows still, and she doesn't settle for the whole of sixteen hours while her closest friends are wandering some state of purgatory. Deaton sets his hand on his shoulder and tells her they are going to be okay, but she's not sure. There's a bitter taste at the back of her mouth.  
  
The next time her supernatural abilities decide to kick in, it's so she can hear Stiles' voice come in through the crackle of the radio. In a way, she knows what he is going through. She knows what it's like to feel as if you're losing your mind. She understands more than anyone else. She plucks at strings and walks in circles and leads everyone to a dead end. Her eyes glaze over with tears and Aiden wraps his arms around her, but he doesn't feel right.  
  
She's used to breezing her way through subjects and textbooks and storing away trivia. It's as easy to her as breathing, but this? This unfathomable, intangible power that is forever sitting at the tip of her tongue is something she doesn't get. She has never felt useless before. It makes her skin crawl.  
  
What if she gets someone hurt because she gets something wrong again? She's already led the police astray, she's already got Stiles stuck in detention--  
  
Stiles loops red string around her fingers. He's close to her, and she's watching his mouth. His hair has grown back out like the reeds of a riverbank. His face is speckled in constellations and when his hands brush hers, she doesn't hear anything. Not a sound. She is overwhelmed by an astonishing silence.  
  
For an instant, she wants to pull him close and kiss him. She wants to set her warm palms on the sides of his face and she wants to feel his breath fan across her lips.  
  
Lydia knows, though. It's impossible to love someone she's put up on a pedestal, and she feels him slip away, right out of reach.


End file.
